What is it? The Glycemic Index is a measure of food’s inclination to raise your blood sugar. Elevated blood sugar from consuming excess carbohydrate can cause diseases such as hyperinsulinemia. Hyperinsulinemia is the chronic and acute elevation of insulin as a result of habitual consumption of excess carbohydrate. The diseases brought about through hyperinsulinemia can be easily avoided by minimizing your carbohydrate consumption. To be specific, minimizing the carbohydrates that give the most substantial rise to your blood sugar, and in turn, insulin levels.
As you may know from our previous blogs about the Zone diet plan, the insulin levels in the blood are what contribute to your energy crashes and the storage of excess fat. By dividing commonly eaten foods into two groups, high-glycemic “bad foods” and low-glycemic “good foods”, you can develop for yourself a more responsible eating plan and better control your body weight.
“Good foods” are typically meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. “Bad foods” include many man-made or processed foodstuffs, and are typically starchy, sweet, or processed foods like bread, pasta, rice, potato, grains and desserts. If you’re wondering how to tell the difference, low glycemic food have a limited shelf life and are found on the perimeter of the grocery store, whereas the high glycemic foods have a longer shelf life and are typically found within the grocery store’s center aisles.
The Glycemic Index is all about the quality of the carbohydrates, not the quantity. If you can manage to mostly avoid high glycemic foods, you will also avoid many of the ills associated with diet. If you can prepare your daily meals using the glycemic index as a guide, this can help to keep your blood glucose levels in check.
If you would like more information on the Glycemic Index, Rick Mendosa has published one of the most complete glycemic indexes, with a list of over 750 common food items, giving values based on glucose’s score of 100. Check it out here.
Today’s Workout:
Buy-In – One arm DB Snatch 5 per side x 3 sets
WOD – “Burp’n Dash”
- 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 Burpees
- 200 M run (in between burpee sets)
Cash-Out – 3 rounds of superman / banana with 10 second intervals x 3 of each
